To Prove Something
by Red Tigress
Summary: Written for the prompt "Trouble is my business." But Edward's not sure if trouble actually is his business. (Takes place in roughly 1717, sometime between Sequences 5 and 6.)


The ringing of a sword leaving its sheathe made Edward throw himself against the wall back into the shadows. The small crate in his hands overflowed with silver and gold plates that had been hastily shoved inside. They rattled slightly, making Edward grimace. He stilled, listening for any signal that might give away the guard's position.

"Hey, someone's over here!" Edward flinched, preparing to drop the crate and bring out his own sword when he realized belatedly the voice hadn't been aimed in his direction. Actually, the sound of footsteps were moving away from him. With a puzzled expression, he slowly brought his head around the corner of the building to look.

About five guards were surrounding a bush. Edward cursed as a familiar form rose out of them, hands up in surrender. Anto, the Assassin he met in Kingston, looked absolutely livid. If Anto was here, it meant there were slaves to be freed, a high-up member of the Templar order, or both.

Edward looked towards the edge of the forest. Escape was so close. This wasn't his problem.

He had taken one step, when he cursed again. This _was_ his problem. He knew the guards wouldn't have been on such high alert if he'd been more careful about his thieving. He gritted his teeth, thinking about the disapproving look Mary would have given him, putting thievery above a higher cause. But a man had to make a living, didn't he?

He hesitated, torn again, between doing what he knew was "right" and self-preservation.

It seemed to be an issue he was facing a lot these days.

The sharp sound of flesh impacting flesh flew through the air made Edward swivel his head back around. Anto grunted, doubling over slightly. Another man thrust the butt of his rifle into Anto's side, said something about learning his place, and making him narrow his eyes. Anto knew more about his place in the world than any of them. Anto was an Assassin.

Edward had a fleeting thought that maybe one day, he could find a place as an Assassin as well. But for the immediate juncture, he owed Anto his help.

He dropped the crate to the ground, charging the nearest guard and drawing his swords as he did so. He saw a brief look of shock cross the guard's face as he turned to see Edward, but then there was a sword going through his belly and he was choking on his own blood.

A second guard shouted, swinging his sword down towards Edward who blocked it with one of his own blades and thrust his second one at the guard. The guard parried, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Anto grab another man's wrist before swinging him into the 4th man. Anto hissed as a blade slashed his arm.

Edward grunted as he parried another sword, and saw a new guard charging straight at them. Anto's back was to the man as he fended off sword attacks with his hidden blades. Edward swept a thrust aside, bringing the opponent's sword to the ground and stepping on it. In the brief respite he shouted, "Anto! Behind you!"

The Assassin turned, but it wasn't fast enough. All he could do was try and deflect the angle of the other man's arm as the sword stabbed through his leg. Anto did shout then, and Edward backhanded the man he was currently fighting in an effort to reach the Assassin's side as he collapsed.

The guard pulled his sword free of Anto's leg, earning another cry of pain, and was raising it in the air. Edward reached Anto just in time to block the downward stroke from slicing through the Assassin's head. "Go," he grit out.

Anto didn't hesitate, pulling himself to his feet, and limping for the relative safety of the woods. Edward spun away from the sword he had just blocked, dropping the sword out of his right hand. In the same motion, he grabbed a throwing knife out of his belt and threw it into the spine of a man trying to pursue Anto. The man dropped with a scream, and Edward blocked another downward stroke with the sword in his left hand. He pitched forward into a roll, grabbing his other sword which he had dropped on the ground. As he rolled to his feet, he brought both sword in front of him in a slicing motion, effectively hamstringing the guard in front of him. The man screamed something terrible and collapsed to the ground in a spray of blood.

Edward was just starting to feel victorious when the sound of a gunshot thundered through the air.

A split second later, a force that felt like he was being punched in the back threw him forwards, and he stumbled. He blinked, wondering what that flush of heat in his side was as he fumbled for one of the flintlock pistols across his chest. He had just pulled it loose when a second gunshot tore through the air and he felt himself spinning wildly as pain erupted in the back of his shoulder.

He cried out as he hit the ground, the coppery taste of blood filling his nostrils and something warm and sticky seeping over his shoulder and side.

The footsteps of the single guard still standing approached him slowly, a predator content with the knowledge it had its prey cornered.

"Captain Kenway," he breathed. "What a surprise. If I had known it was you, I may have been more lenient so that you could see the noose instead."

Something hit his side, turning his body over, and his world exploded in agony. His vision greyed out around the edges, and he might have screamed. But he held onto his gun, fingers weakly bringing back the hammer.

Either the guard didn't notice, or he didn't care. His mistake. The bastard had gotten cocky in his capture of a pirate, and Edward apparently looked close enough to death that he wasn't a perceived threat.

Clearly this man had not dealt with pirates before.

Edward didn't try and had his pain, breathing deeply and heavily and moaning a little in the process. It wasn't faked. The way he fluttered his eyes and let his head fall to the ground was, however.

The man leaned close, intent on taking his prize back to the barracks.

Edward drew his gun, pushed the barrel against the man's chest and fired. The guard didn't even have time to scream as he collapsed, dead on top of Edward.

Of course, this made Edward's injuries flare up, and he did black out then. It might have been for a minute, or ten, he wasn't sure. When he came to, dull pain engulfed his side and his shoulder. Moving his good arm, he grunted, trying to pull the dead body off of him. Blood ran warm between them, and Edward grimaced as the dull pains spiked sharply when he moved. Gravity took over and the dead man fell to the ground next to him as Edward panted for breath.

He rolled over, getting his good arm underneath him and clutching his injured side with his other arm. Sweat ran in rivulets down his face, pooling into the dry dirt beneath him to mix with the pools of blood already there. Grunting, he pushed himself to his feet. The world swayed dizzily around him for a moment, and he leaned to one side trying to correct it. He began to stumble off into the direction of the woods, and the relative safety of the Jackdaw he knew was beyond it.

The trees all looked the same, made worse by the fact his world was still spinning around him. He would make his way to a tree, lean on it for a few moments as he caught his breath, before moving onto the next one to repeat the process. He was fairly positive he was moving away from the plantation, but he couldn't be sure.

He whispered a curse as he looked down at his side to see blood continue to leak through his fingers. At least that bullet wasn't still in his body, but he could feel the one in his shoulder rattling around at every step. His head was hot and dizzy with nausea, and his pain was all-consuming. It would be so much easier just to lie down, catch his breath…

Damn it. Damn him. He was a pirate cursed with morality. A damn Robin Hood. Except there would be glorified overturning of a King in the end. His future was death. He brought death to everyone around him. Maybe that's why he had tried to help Anto. Was he actually trying to help the other man, or had he been looking for an excuse to assuage his conscious? To make his life more worthwhile?

Edward grunted out a bitter laugh. He was becoming far too self-exanimating near death. But the feeling of guilt remained. His laugh turned into something that resembled a choked-off sob as he sagged against a tree, his strength all but spent. No wonder his wife hated him. He was a piece of shit, searching for glory and wealth when he could have been so much more. So many people had been killed because of _his _hasty actions…

As he slid down the tree trunk to the ground, he looked around. He was sure now he had been heading in the opposite direction of the Jackdaw. The end was near now, he could feel it. There were so many regrets. He wished he could tell his wife how sorry he was, and that she had been right. He wished he could have helped the people of Nassau build a better life for themselves that didn't end in poverty and persecution. He wished he could tell Mary…well, he wasn't really sure, but he wished he could have been more honest with her.

Oh God, Mary. Now he was hallucinating her bursting through the woods in front of him, like a goddamned, messy, Avenging Angel. He smiled briefly, as his vision began to blacken around him. She looked furious, one of the few times he'd ever seen her lose her cool. Wasn't that irony; even in his hallucinations she was angry at him.

Wasn't everyone though?

"S…s-sorry…" he whispered as his vision tunneled to blackness.

_***AC*AC*AC***_

The next thing Edward was aware of was mostly a sense of surprise that he was still alive. The details were a little fuzzy, but he was pretty sure he should have been dead.

He opened his eyes slowly, letting out a long breath as he did so. He was lying on his back, and staring up at a grungy ceiling. The hot, slick air of the Carribbean made the bedclothes stick uncomfortably to his skin.

"If this is death," he whispered, "it is downright boring."

"I should think after the week you've had, you would be pining for a boring death."

The Irish accent made him snap his head to the right and he winced as pain flared up in his body. Mary was across the room, her hair up in a bandanna, staring at him unsympathetically.

He smirked. "If this indeed is death," he whispered again, "I am not surprised to find you here."

"Oh, please," she huffed. "With the risks you take, I'll long outlive ya." She got to her feet, and reached over to the one table in the small room taking two glasses from the top. As she brought them over to Edward, he saw one was water, the other a dark amber liquid that was probably rum. He began automatically reaching for the rum, but Mary gave him the water instead, bringing the rum to her lips.

He frowned, but lurched up painfully so he could drink out of the glass. After the water wet his throat, he grumbled. "A man's in pain, you know."

"You can have some when you can drink water without bein' sick to your stomach." She arched an eyebrow at him. He was about to argue but at that moment the water hit his stomach and he fell back against his pillow with a groan and tried not to move.

"Are you my nursemaid now?" he said weakly.

"Hardly. But clearly you need someone to look after ya." She leaned forward, elbow on her knee and head in her hand, studying him. He squirmed slightly under the scrutiny.

"If you mean the Assassin's, Ah Tabai won't have me," he said. He was surprised by how much the admission pained him. He didn't really desire to be an Assassin, but at the same time, he couldn't quite shake the feeling that their higher calling was something he was envious of.

Mary narrowed her eyes. "Perhaps in time," she said cryptically. "In the mean time, you need rest. You were shot twice. No small injury, to say the least."

Edward narrowed his eyes. "How'd I-"

"Escape?" Mary said, a hint of amusement in her voice. "You didn't. Not really. I was on the other side of the island, providing backup for Anto. You just had the happy coincidence of being in the right place at the right time for us to rescue your sorry hide." She gave him that calculating look again. "Anto found his way back to me in time for my crew to help him and me to go find you. It wasn't hard from the trail of blood. You were almost gone when I got to ya."

Oh. So that hadn't been an illusion. Edward wasn't sure if he was relieved or not.

"Anto told me what you did."

Edward smirked again. "Saved his sorry hide?"

"Don't be an arse," she growled, squeezing his bad shoulder. He flinched, fighting down the groan of pain that threatened to claw loose from his throat.

"Now who's being an arse?" he panted.

She ignored him. "Why did you do it? You didn't owe Anto anything after you helped him in Kingston. You could have saved yourself a world of hurt and trouble."

"Trouble is my business," he smiled.

She moved her hand towards his shoulder, and he slunk back a few inches in the bed.

"Alright, alright." He turned his face away, not quite certain of his own feelings on the matter. "Maybe…maybe I just wanted to save a man, is all."

"Is it?" she asked. "You kill men all the time. What was different about Anto?"

"Jesus, woman, I don't know!" he growled, suddenly on the defensive. "Maybe I felt I did owe him something. Maybe I was angry about the way I've been treated. Maybe I…" his voice broke, and he turned away embarrassed. "…just wanted to do the right thing, for once."

He felt a hand on his, and he turned to look at Mary. Her eyes had softened a bit, which surprised him. "You're a good man, Edward," she said quietly. "No matter what you may tell yourself. You're different than the rest of them. You can be something more than this. And I think you want to."

Edward turned away, not sure how to tell her he didn't know _how_ to be anything different.

"Promise me, no matter what happens with the Sage and the Observatory, you'll be something more…someone better."

It was like someone had poked him with a sword. He knew he was amounting to nothing; it was the same thing his wife had told him all over again. It hurt; and suddenly, he just wanted to hurt Mary back.

"What about you?" He growled. "For all your talk of being better, and something more, you're still here, _privateering_, being Ah Tabai's Errand Boy in the process. Where's _your_ sense of betterness?"

She stiffened, blinking in what Edward could only guess was astonishment. She let go of his hand, and suddenly Edward felt like an absolute stinking pile of shit.

"Mary, I didn't…didn't mean…" he pleaded.

"No. You're not ready, Edward. But someday you might be." She turned to leave, giving him one last disappointing look as she did.

Edward curled in on himself, grabbing fistfuls of his hair in his hands as he squeezed his eyes tight and gritted his teeth.

_It wasn't supposed to be this way._


End file.
